Can you believe it? Cellphones have now been around for 40 years

Long before the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry, there was the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, which 40 years ago today was used to make the world’s first cellular phone call.

The brick-like device weighed more than a kilogram, measured 25-centimetres long and had a 20-minute battery life that took about 10 hours to recharge.

On April 3, 1973, Motorola engineer Martin Cooper made the first cellphone call in New York. On the receiving end of the call was the head of a rival communications company.

It would be another 10 years before the cellphone was made available to U.S. consumers – at a hefty price tag of US $3,995.

From its introduction, Syd Bolton of the Personal Computer Museum in Brantford, Ont. says the cellphone was considered a status symbol.

Pointing to the Motorola ‘bag phone’ – a carrying case with a built-in mobile phone released in the late '80s -- Bolton said the ability to communicate on the go was considered a luxury.

“When the (bag phone) came out at $2,000, you had to have a real reason to have one,” Bolton told CTV’s Canada AM on Wednesday. “So you would actually see one person at a coffee shop with one, and everyone staring at them.

“It wasn’t until the price and the size came down that it became very popular,” he continued.

Today, out of the world’s estimated seven billion people, the UN says six billion have access to a mobile phone.

Let us know in the comments, what are your memories of early experiences with cellular technology?

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Photos

Martin Cooper, chairman and CEO of ArrayComm, holds a Motorola DynaTAC, a 1973 prototype of the first handheld cellular telephone on Market Street in San Francisco, Wednesday April 2, 2003. (AP / Eric Risberg)